The Crane Game
by zlot
Summary: Long nights of vigil, endless ridicule from his father and peers, a gaudy sounding oath of revenge; these are the things Cato dealt with at the Fighter Academy. He aims to make his father proud, and to justify all his stress, by seeking out the evil sorcerer Heavensbane and destroying him. From a little fire, his path to glory waits burning.
1. A Brief Prelude

The Crane Game

**AN: Before we begin, I would just like to say that Suzanne Collins own most of the characters used here, and I would like to thank Rich Burlew for the direction of the plot.**

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Cato groaned a bit. _This?! This is the best I could get _he thought, reflecting on the recruits he found for his quest to destroy the evil lich, Heavensbane. _Maybe I went about it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to Peeta. Sitting in a corner cloaked as a mysterious stranger; what was he thinking?! Of course I'd only get the most abnormal people to join me that way!_ He let out a heavy sigh, pondering the alternative.

His friend, Marvel Flashpoint, a dwarf priest and an exile from his homeland, noticed his disappointment with their new allies. "Och, Cato, wha's it be now? Ye best na be reflecting on tha' 'disaster' last week that ye be so intent ta call it." Walking behind the group of adventurers, it was inexplicably easy for them to speak without being heard. It was like the others couldn't listen to anything going on. They were absorbed in their own discussions anyway, and the clanging of armor between Cato and Marvel drowned out their words.

Good thing too, because Cato only turned more scathing of the new recruits every minute. "No, it's not just yesterday. I've been regretting this since—honestly—since before we started. I thought there was something wrong with them back in the tavern, and what happened yesterday only made it worse."

"Well o' course tha dun na' but make it all worse! Ye haf to remember, Cato, ye be tha lead'r 'ere!"

"A leader's only as good as his followers, Marvel!" Cato cut him off. "Look at them!" He waved his arms in front of him, pointing to each member of the party in no particular sequence. "The thief, Katniss, she's carrying my third backup dagger on her belt like she doesn't think I'd recognize it." Katniss Everdeen was an archer, a rogue, and an integral member of organized crime back in her hometown. It was a thieves' syndicate called "The Hob" or something, and Katniss was one of the best lifters. Cato knew there was a better term for it, but couldn't think of what it might be; he wasn't an insider on underworld jargon, neither its shady nor supernatural sense. Whenever something had to be stolen, Katniss was a pretty safe bet as the one responsible, unless evidence pointed to someone else. And if there was any evidence to be found, it would always point to someone else; she was always clean with her work.

How it contrasted with her appearance: she looked like she was always covered in dirt or mud. It was all over her skin, and with the way it was spread, it may have confused some people into thinking it was an organic camouflage mixture. Cato wasn't so fooled, but that was just his Academy education at work. The grime Katniss wore—all the words that describe it more accurately fail to do so with any semblance of elegance—was not a deliberate pattern. It was nothing more than a mess.

"Clove, the murderer, definitely hasn't learned anything at all, or else she might be somewhere else, other than behind Peeta." Clove Carabel... She was a ranger. She was on the run from something or someone. She talked a lot about killing people, which really didn't say much in her favor regarding the people who might be chasing her. For a ranger, she strayed away from using bows, finding knives and daggers much more to her liking. The two seemed to be perfect opposites to each other, a contrast that stood out even further with each aspect about them, except only for their shared disregard for the law.

Of course, their differences were apparent even in their crimes. Katniss stole wealth; Clove stole lives. Katniss never left evidence of her heists beyond the very disappearance of what she stole; Clove would let the world know who she killed, what she killed them with, and how she went about it. Then there was the bow and arrows held by the rogue, and the daggers held by the ranger. When each wielded the other's traditional specialty, they seemed so much more like perfect opposites.

"Speaking of whom, he's as dumb as blond gets." Peeta Mellark was a bard; his singing was tolerable. There was a lot of room for improvement, but it could also be a great deal worse, so Cato never bothered to complain about his music, because, on a supernatural level, bardic music was akin to magic, and because he personally understood that nobody should be lambasted for their chosen profession.

But gods damn it all, that man was DUMB! Where humans, orcs, rats, elves, goblins, dwarves and most living creatures had a brain, and where their cells all had nuclei—a brain on a much smaller scale—and even all the nuclei had a sequencer to read and decrypt all the chemical messages that needed to get through the cell, Peeta didn't have a bloody molecule up there telling him what was a good idea and what wasn't. It seemed that every day Peeta had some new test for Cato, some new trial to showcase some act of stupidity that went beyond any limit hinted towards the day before. The Academy graduate couldn't comprehend how it was possible for one person to keep getting dumber by the minute, but Peeta pulled it off.

It was even worse that the two looked so much alike. Back to back, they stood just as high. By the build of their bodies, they might be mistaken for twins or even clones; that was how similar they appeared. Both of them had the same golden hair cut close and they shared each other's icy blue eyes. All that differed was the way they presented their uncannily identical features. Something inherent about them completely changed the meaning of the handsome, blue-eyed, blond headed build. Cato was hardened, tempered like the four-foot long steel sword he carried, while Peeta was as soft as the airy, wispy bread he and his mother used to bake together.

"And I bet you Magde is just waiting for the chance to blow us all up, just like yesterday, or the day before that, or last week, as well." An elven wizard from the small village of Firknot far to the east, in one of the great forests. She kept immaculate care of herself, but the odor of animal feces always surrounded her. Madge, as a wizard, specialized in the ways of magic that could shatter both body and mind; a simple flick of her fingers could undo ten thousand years of nature's work, ripping apart and mutilating the delicacy with which the world at large created its denizens and features.

He sighed, still regretting his decisions in that tavern. "Who did you find, anyway?"

"They na' be much, Cato," Marvel said dismissively. "Tho' I o'erherd 'em say sum'thin aboot tha gates of hell. One o' 'em might'a even said 'agin' too. Dinnae worry yerself too much, Cato. It's all gonna be fine."

_How many people showed up for the spot? How many left? Is this just the sort of thing they all didn't want to deal with? I can't think a CR 13 lich would be too much for them to handle... Oh, right, it's because I'm not paying them... it's a fair enough trade, I suppose._

With his final thoughts about his group concluded, Cato saw the castle on the hilltop and announced, "Here we are, everyone. The fortress of Haymitch Abernathy. If anyone has any idea what he did, speak up now." Silence from the rest of the party. Even from Madge, who always had something to say. "Alright then. We'll find Heavensbane in his throne room." _Thanks for that, Oracle._ "That'll probably be deep underground. Get ready. I'm kicking the door open and then we're in. No encores of the fiasco. We discussed this."

They all hustled up the hill, knowing they'd be going back down. There were mountains in the distance, providing a sort of backdrop to Abernathy's Castle. A scant few peaks rose above the line of view of the tallest spires, but for the most part, the mountain range looked pretty small from the hill. An effect of the world's curvature, no doubt.

Cato kicked the door open, broke the giant wooden portals right off their hinges. And in they went.

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**AN: Characterization gets boring to read sometimes, for some people. And I don't particularly enjoy writing it, which only exacerbates the issue. But I think it's tolerable to save some of it for later. Or earlier. (expect a prequel story characterizing the Order of the Flame)**


	2. It Never Quite Works

The Crane Game

**AN: I thank Rich Burlew for pretty much everything. I also thank Suzanne Collins for her characters that I am borrowing for a bit. Anyway, behold! The start of RPG jokes, which will persist for a long time!**

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Clove snorted. "Nice entrance."

"Shut up," Cato shot back. He didn't need this from her. Or anyone else, for that matter, but especially not from that little murderous nut.

"I'm with Clove here, that really was a letdown." That one was Katniss. It was like they all had some sort of conspiracy to annoy him as much as possible. That had to be it.

"I swear, there are goblins in here!" he shouted as he looked into the antechamber. He had to salvage something from this... lack of goblins behind the door. He was probably losing Clove's attention already.

On second thought, he probably never had that to begin with.

"I cannot fathom your collective haste in this regard," Madge offered. "Goblins dwell underground; it is unreasonable for Sir Redblade to have suggested otherwise, yes, but we can hardly blame him for lacking this knowledge." Redblade. Cato had come from a long line of warriors, all named after the sword he carried on his perilous journey. The eponymous red blade took its tint from battle—from dust. The enchanted sword took in the dust of raging battles, and wherever there was such rage, the sword would reverse all its own wear. It never bore so much as a scratch.

_Smartass _he thought. And before she opened her mouth to speak a second time, Cato cut her off, "Thank you for disparaging my intellect. Now let's look for stairs down."

"Maybe avoid big fancy doors this time," Clove added.

"You just shut up."

"You tell Clove that, but not anyone even remotely helping you," Katniss says flatly. He pretended to ignore that. There was no use discussing Cato's biases about who could talk, and when they could talk, or anything else, because they all had pieces of paper saying that they had to obey his orders until this Heavensbane was gone.

If he let Madge speak— and when she spoke, somewhere in the world, a hurricane would hit or someone would suffocate from all the air she breathed in or out— that was his choice, whether it be because she was arguing on his behalf, or because he felt differently about her than everyone else, or because he liked to hear the sound of her voice, or because he feared arcane retribution should he deny her such freedom. And the truth was, it was a combination of those.

Peeta was singing "Search, search, search, search for the stairs down into the dungeon" when she looked over and saw an indentation in the wall of the atrium. A true test of her perceptive prowess, the stairs were ingeniously hidden by planks connecting two walls, with bent iron nails sticking out of them and splinters of wood scattered on the floor beneath the planks. _Masterwork. A true work of structural brilliance._

The stairs were also hidden with a sign hanging above the doorway. Cato groaned and smashed the feeble barricade apart. The party descended the stairs.

Cato got the first look at the next barricade. A single wooden board, of substantially lower quality than the gigantic doors into the castle antechamber blocked his group from entering. "There," he commented. "Not nearly as fancy as the first, so there must be goblins now."

"Break it down, Cato!" Peeta encouraged. _What an idiot..._ What else was Cato even going to do, anyway? Disassemble it and bring it back to town for a quick profit? All things considered, that actually might not have been a bad idea. But there were more important things going on.

A swift kick and the flimsy board was shattered; the goblins in the underground room preparing their ambush were themselves caught off guard by this stunning display of force. In their surprise, Katniss shot one twice in the chest, and loosed a third arrow to another monster's head. Cato and Marvel ran up in front, both best suited for the heavy melee fighting with the seven goblins in the room. So two skilled fighters left themselves open to a partial surround, an advantage which their foes sought immediately to exploit. Madge cast an enchantment onto one attacker, sending it into a magical sleep. And for as long as this battle was to last, even such brief inaction would be fatal. More immediately fatal were Clove's daggers, sank into the vitals of the one goblin coming around behind the front line fighters. With a squeal, he fell and died, clearing the two armored warriors' backs. The arrow-wounded goblins approached cautiously, letting their healthier allies charge into Cato and Marvel first. A hopeless situation for them, really, as Cato stabbed through one's entire body with his great sword, and cut another in half at the waist. In a word, it was a bloodbath, and the last combatant entered the fray, charging at Marvel, savagely swinging his axe, and swept aside by a simple flick of the stout war-priest's shield. Marvel stuck his spear into his assailant's head, piercing the skull and shattering the jaw, not quite clean, but not quite grotesque as the splattering of organs Cato caused.

The wounded goblins fled, and they would perish from blood loss later, while Cato decapitated the sleeper. He turned to face the party, and he admitted, "All told, a much better performance than last time."

"We're improving!" Peeta cheered.

And then a strange energy passed through them, the effects of which invisible and intangible wave manifested themselves in some of the adventurers more clearly than in others. Most evidently, Peeta suddenly wore a light chain armor.

"Wha's 'appenin'?" Marvel asked. "Peeta, ye dinnae buy tha' in town, did ye?"

"No. He didn't," Clove angrily answered in the blonde's place. "And last I remember, these," she juggled her daggers, "were a size larger a moment ago."

Madge thought for a moment, and offered her keen insight. "The Gods are probably restructuring the universe again. I read that this sort of update has happened on at least three instances in the past, albeit with more dramatic alterations across those previous iterations than we observe here. I, for one, think that it's about time something was done to further improve wizardry."

"..." Clove balked. "So, what you're saying is, it's too late to switch to short swords?"

"They had 1d6 damage and the same critical threat range, and would have 1d4 damage small, weigh pretty much the same, and barely cost more. Why didn't get a pair of those in the first place?" Cato asked. "We're sure as hell not turning back."

_Finally_. She didn't respond...

Cato looked at the two corridors out of the room. If it was going to be a labyrinth, he decided it'd be best to split up and search both parts simultaneously. Both would have to be guarded only half as much, and they wouldn't clear the corridors any slower by separating, if his predictions to the groups was remotely accurate.

Katniss preempted his obvious announcement, "Madge is with me."

Marvel walked to Cato's side. Because who else was Cato going to pick first?

"Uh..." Katniss hesitated. "I'm gonna go with..." She put her hand over her mouth, thinking hard about this. To be sure, Clove was very aggressive. Of course, this also meant that Clove was very aggressive. Who would have guessed?

On the other hand, Peeta was pretty much useless. She finally decided, "Clove," and the three girls entered the first corridor.

One last pick. Out of one person. And Cato stood in the doorway to the second corridor, having a tough time choosing. "One choose one." It was a problem of probabilities for ages to come. There was one way to choose one element out of a set of one elements.

"Cato, are ye gonna-?"

"I'm thinking." Just one way to choose one out of one. Cato had to consider this carefully, because he really didn't want to pick the wrong person to join him.

Peeta was raising his hand, like a kid in school at recess, trying to get chosen for a team in kickball or something...

"I got these boots of speed a while back," Katniss was telling Madge. "They were powerful, you must know how important running speed was in my old profession."

"I do."

Katniss was stunned. Only two words? What happened to Madge in the past few minutes?

"You were expecting me to continue?" Madge wondered. "Yes, I am well aware of the alacrity of foot necessary to maintain optimal efficacy in the art of burglary. Shall I say even more?" She furrowed her brows.

With a sigh, Katniss professed, "No, but you had me worried there. Anyway, powerful effect, but the boots were lime green."

"A grave conundrum you faced," Madge passively assented. And when she thought over it more rationally, she asked, "What exactly would the problem with that be?"

"Stealth was also important."

"Speaking of stealth," Clove interrupted, "I think I just failed a spot check."

"I don't see anything."

"Exactly. You must have failed it too. Hey, Madge, don't you have alertness?"

"Hmm? The bonus from the raven familiar? Oh, no, I apologize, I forged my arcane bond with a token. As an elf, though, I have racial bonuses that amount to the feat." Madge took a look around with her improved elven senses. "How unfortunate. I too, can see nothing."

So maybe they were imagining things. Maybe there really was nothing there. After all, there's just no way to spot something that doesn't actually exist. Illusions require the failure of a different set of skills than simple visual or aural perception. Illusions require a strength of will to disbelieve, and it was the girls' perception challenged. So maybe there was nothing.

Or maybe there was a team of ninjas, who, annoyed, proclaimed, "We're right here. In front of you. We're ready to attack at any moment now."

To which Clove merely responded, "I think I just failed a listen check. Did anyone else hear anything?"

No. Nobody heard it...

"Jump, jump, jump," Peeta was singing. "Jump over the pit." What absurd song inspired this even more absurd song? Surely, it was a mystery for the whole universe.

Cato was the last over. "Alright, Peeta, why are you singing?"

"I told you, I'm a bard. I can use my bardic music to inspire competence at skill checks."

Cato shrugged and approached an ogre blocking the way. The brute was not so much a security guard as a toll collector, and he demanded a hundred gold to pass. He whispered to Marvel, "You okay with lying to him?"

"Aye," he answered. "Jus' dun' kill 'im 'less ye absolutely need ta."

"What constitutes absolute necessity, just out of curiosity?"

"If'n he attacks ye first, go ahead."

_Ah_. Cato cleared his throat, and began, "We, uh... we paid in advance."

The ogre grumbled. "So complicated... you really paid?"

"Yeah," he kept on lying. He heard a sound beneath this talking, and raised his voice over it. "Totally, we even tipped you to forget us. In hindsight, that may have been a bad idea. Sorry I didn't think that through, but I swear it's me." Only after he was done, did he realize it was Peeta.

"Bluff, bluff, bluff, bluff the stupid ogre" it went.

As they ran from the infuriated ogre, Cato shouted, "What made you think that would work?!"

No doubt, it was the same thing that made Cato think Peeta was thinking...

* * *

**AN: I understand that a lot of people seem to like seeing relationships. Romantic ones in particular. No promises, but I think Cato/Madge is under-represented, and look forward to making something of it.**


	3. Customer Service

The Crane Game

**AN: One of my two sources has a fantastic author, who seems to have complete mastery over the art of telling tales and killing off characters at the perfect times. Suzanne Collins is **_**also**_** an amazing writer, and I thank both her and Rich Burlew for the sources. Moving on.**

* * *

Run, run, run, run from the stupid ogre Cato couldn't quite fool! Not that it was for any lack of trying on Peeta's part. Cato just wasn't so good at bluffing; he could never win a game of poker to save his life. And not just bluffing, but also reading his opponents' bluffs. Sensing their motives, so to speak. He was awful at both of these essential skills: essential to winning at gambling games, and essential to doing business with unscrupulous types, essential skills to surviving, say, in college.

Essential, most immediately, to evading tolls being collected by ogres.

So maybe it was all Cato's fault that the ogre toll collector was chasing them now. Or maybe it was Marvel's fault that he didn't have a higher skill at lying, what with the sense of honor instilled in him from a strict, stoic society. Or maybe it was Peeta's fault for singing so gleefully about the ogre's idiocy, and showcasing his own as though in a grand, glass box in a museum of some kind.

Yeah, definitely that last one...

So they ran, the three men of the party, from ogre giving chase. Peeta looked straight ahead, but worried, asked, "Cato, did we lose them? Please tell me we lost them!"

Cato looked behind, and answered in the question, "What exactly do you mean by 'lost them'?"

"Jus' ans'er 'is question, Cato!" Marvel shouted. "No need fer mind games!" Marvel was looking for "word games," of course, but this was one skill the warrior prided himself upon.

He didn't waste time spinning his friend's words. "Because if by 'lost them' you mean 'attracted several others,' I should say 'yes, we've definitely attracted the attention of some other ogres'!" Somehow, at least. Whether by the sound of clanking metal or loud footsteps, or by the curious sight of pursuit, some of the giant's companions found their way into the fray.

They ran and ran, out of the corridor and back into the room of the goblins' slaughter. They heard a cry down the other corridor: "Ogres!"

And so a second battle began in that room with the familiar arrows with the green fletching, embedded into the head of the leading ogre. Unfazed by these minor cranial injuries, the brute raised his great club for a crushing blow on Marvel's head. He blocked the blow, deflected it to the side, with his shield, but got struck by the ogre's backswing, bashed aside and separated from his spear. Of the three monsters, the one in the back, the most perceptive, looked around and turned to charge at the sniper from the corridor. The last of the ogres rushed at Cato, and the two most massive of their sides traded hits: a blow to the chest for a cut at the hip, one arm crushed for one cleft off. The savage giant, lamed with steel, dropped his great club and struck at Cato with his fist, knocking him prone, but still not helpless as he swept the ogre off his feet. Both combatants floored, the trained fighter heaved up his weapon with his strength and martial prowess and delivered a forceful vertical slice at the ogre, whose hand gave itself in vain to block Cato's relentless power attack. He wrenched his sword out of the ogre's bifurcated arm, and traced cuts deep into his legs, crippling him before the inevitable death by blood loss. And all the while, Marvel grappled and shoved the ogre that towered over him, pushing it back to where he dropped his spear, and the other remaining ogre, the last one unhurt, was about to knock Katniss unconscious. Clove leapt at its head and gouged its eyes, alternatively carving and ripping its face. Temporarily immobilized with pain, the ogre broke its run, in which opportunity Madge fired two rays of searing flame from her extended pointer, burning a hole in its chest. Katniss shot right to the heart, and the ogre fell to its knees, collapsing entirely with Clove's daggers buried in tracks on its neck. The final scenes of the fight were of Marvel, diving for his spear, grabbing it and swinging it around towards the last attacker, and last of all of his spear plunged into the ogre's body and of the life fading from its eyes.

Katniss approached Cato, clutching his arm, in the mess of bodies. "Ogres, huh. That's what you were running from?"

He was still breathing heavily, both because of the intense pain and internal injuries and bleeding, and from the exhaustion of running back through the whole hall and immediately turning to fight while already nearly fatigued. "Yeah," he got out between breaths. And he looked at her, considering her word choice, continuing, "You were running too?"

"We were," she admitted. If it wasn't about money, she really had no reason to lie to her boss. "Just don't know what it was."

"We can deal with it later." As he lie down on his back, his injuries only amplified their impulsive cerebral screams.

Peeta was elsewhere. He escaped the clash with the ogres, and, though he didn't see the rest of the party, maybe it was just because they were all hiding, or he was bad at spotting.

Definitely that last one...

Bruised a bit, but other than that, largely unscathed, Marvel asked the rest of the group, "Well, thar ogres be dun fer. Wha do tha leave us ta do next then?"

The way they all looked, battered, torn, generally looking like mutilated crap, should have been a good indication. Perhaps also the way they looked at him and not the to him: expectantly, waiting for something it was in his power alone to provide.

"Ah. Right." Healing, the most basic job of an adventuring cleric. One by one, he began treating their wounds, draining his supply of restorative magic for the day with curing spells, even garnering a complaint from Clove that he ran out of the higher degree spells before getting to her.

And then Peeta returned in even worse shape than anyone else.

A strange empathy in Katniss's mind drew the bard's name from her mouth. He was singing to himself, "Clot, clot, clot, clot my bleeding arteries." He had a black eye, cuts everywhere on his body, blood seeping out, probably an infection or two, a huge gash under his stomach where his organs threatened to spill out, and most conspicuously, two short swords dug into his body.

"Hey, Katniss," he greeted with a weak and shaky voice, and only a trace of the cheerfulness he projected so much earlier on. Not for any real such lack of joviality, "I found some free short swords for Clove, so she'll be happy about that. They were in my spleen, and I guess it really hurts. Like, really, a lot."

Marvel examined him and his wounds. Visceral stuff. Nothing to scoff at. But nothing broke through to the young man's spirit. Marvel asked "How badly are ye 'urt, lad?" to which Peeta answered, "Eh, so-so. It depends really," transferring his lute to his right hand to better hold something to display in his left. "How important is one of these?"

Well his appendix wasn't _that_ important, all things considered...

Marvel and Katniss stared in shock, and Cato came over just to see how things were going. He asked how bad it was, and while Marvel answered the obvious, "He's in a real bad shape, and me spells fer treating wounds like tha hav run out fer tha day," Katniss wandered off.

Cato thought for a moment and instructed, "Just do whatever you can. I trust you'll figure out something better about this than I could."

So in his approach, and in Cato's departure, he asked Peeta to sit down. Marvel set up and lit a circle of incense, a traditional offering for a prayer and call for divine assistance. "Oh, Mighty Thor," his ritual started, "yer humble servant asks for yer assistance in me hour o' need. Please, Great Smiter, hear me requests for a blessing o' li-"

He was cut off by a message from the heavens, though not exactly what he expected. "Hello! And welcome to ThorPrayer! [The Great and Mighty Smiter, Thor] whose aid you have requested is not available right now. To leave a message and orison number, chant 'five' now. To request more immediate automated assistance, chant 'one' now."

Confusion overtook him in the form of this new system for handling prayers. The priest stuttered and stammered, but eventually spoke out, "One."

"To continue in Common from this point forward, chant 'one' now. Er mwyn parhau yn Draseg, siant 'dau' nawr."

"Uh... One." Why was there even an option to continue in Dwarven language? Who would ever use that? All dwarves knew Common anyway!

"If you know the name of the miracle you would like to request, chant 'one' now. If you would like to narrow down from a pre-defined list of miracles, chant 'two' now. To re-select a language in which to conduct this service, chant 'nine' now."

Damn these new-fangled machines and all their complexity! What does it take to get some healing around here?! "Lemme see," he muttered, "dinnae think critical wounds'll cover all tha' so... one."

"Please intone the first three letters of the miracle now."

"H-E-A." The Heal miracle. The most effective of the curing spells there was.

"You have indicated this miracle: Heartburn (Terminal). If this is correct, chant 'one.' If not, chant 'two.'"

"No! Two!" Okay, fine, so the machine made a little mistake.

"You have indicated this miracle: Heat Blisters of Eternal Pain. If this is correct, chant 'one.' If not, chant 'two.'"

"Two! TWO!" Just how dumb was this machine going to get?

"You have indicated this miracle: Heavenly Burning Vengeance of Divine Wrath. If this is correct, chant 'one.' If not, chant 'two.'"

"TWO! Blast ye!"

"Uh, Marvel?" Peeta was lost. Not that this was unusual, but for now, his total ignorance was entirely justified. "How long is this going to take?"

"This shoul' only be takin' mebbe two or three more minutes, tha' bein' a course if tha' bloody answering machine will jus' co-operate wi' me 'ere."

"Random chance preference recognized. Please hold, as we forward you to another automated answering machine, which will help you in your random miracle selection. Have a nice day, and thank you for using ThorPrayer!"

There was a little delay, during which Marvel began to turn red, either with anger at this useless new development in the heavenly orison system, or with embarrassment at being unable to help a friend in need. One of the two.

"You have elected to capitalize on good fortune. By fair, unprejudiced, eighty-percent pseudo-random lottery, you have been granted the miracle: Tumor. To add another curse of Tumor's ilk, chant 'one' now. To choose the type of tumor with which to smite Thor's enemies, chant 'three' now."

"Uh... three!" The full implications of the machine's instructions illuminated in his head just a moment too late, and the regret set in just one too early. He shouted, "No, wait! CRAP!" And, unfortunately, the machine took this as an answer.

"You have selected: Colon tumor."

Peeta was confused by this string of numbers, as only Marvel could hear the divine automaton's voice. He mused, "Maybe I could just get a potion or something?"

"Have a nice day, and thank you for using ThorPrayer!" Marvel merely gagged...

* * *

**AN: Geez, I'm awful at this... I think I planned way too much. Of course, my planning is, to this very moment, still flexible. I'm open to suggestions on how to take certain characters that I don't have many solid ideas for.**

**Some such characters I'd like to see how you all might handle: Glimmer, Effie Trinket, Annie (I'm also kind of starved for male characters...)**


	4. Verbosity and Vigilance

The Crane Game

**AN: Many thanks to Rich Burlew and Suzanne Collins. And here we are: all up to speed. Time to slow down again.**

* * *

The swords were removed, and the whole disaster with ThorPrayer and the colon tumors was canceled, so Peeta was left with major, life threatening injuries. And an internal organ severely out of place.

Katniss came to him, stealthily holding a glass vial full of a pale pink liquid. "I found this healing potion for you, Peeta," she offered. Cure Serious Wounds; a very potent healing brew, and of all such potions, the second strongest behind the pure white Potion of Cure Critical Wounds.

He took it, and as she helped him imbibe the draught, he thanked her in a voice that started as shaky as his hands, and grew more energetic and vigorous with each sip of the magic. Instantaneously, cuts and gashes closed, and even the deeper wounds healed faster than any natural process should ever do.

It also tasted of pears.

Katniss eyed the bard, ostensibly to make sure he was fine—that the potion had indeed done its magic, as it were—but lingering on him longer than such an appraisal should reasonably take.

There was a clattering sound. "Hey!" Clove was looking for something. "Anybody seen a crystal bottle with the pink potion in it? I want to know what it does!" She saw such a vial, with a trace of such a liquid left over in it, because Peeta didn't drink down the whole thing, and glared at Katniss accusingly. "You took the potion."

The rogue looked back in shock, crying confirmation bias. "You're just saying that because you lost the potion and I'm a good thief. What, are you going to lock everything up and deadbolt it? Just because I'm a rogue and might steal it?"

"Yeah: I lost the potion, and you're a good thief," Clove's outrage grew. "Do I have to put two and two together for you? Obviously you used your thief skills and stole the potion when I wasn't looking."

But Katniss continued on her own points, disregarding the argument at hand. "Didn't Cato get you out of jail, too? I thought that whole process was supposed to sensitize you to other people," she sniffed. She brushed off an already muted objection—Clove was starting to feel her own guilt in place of the thief's—and tearfully added, "Clove, I thought we were friends after some of the things we did yesterday. I just... I thought we could trust each other better than this..."

She and Peeta left the psychotic, mind-boggled ranger to her own devices. All told, a perfect bluff.

It ran in the family. Now: what had they done yesterday...?

They met Cato, who was standing over Madge's shoulder as she sat in a trance, holding a large belt. The leather coil levitated in the air and glowed with a majestic aura in a magenta hue. Katniss asked what was going on here.

"Madge is casting Identify," Cato explained. "She's trying to figure out what this belt we found on the ogres does."

Now, something shot through Katniss's mind here that made her seize an opportunity. "I bet you 10 gold pieces it's a belt of giant strength."

Cato took the bet just as Madge's pink energy aura dissipated. Her spell was done. "Having completed my divinations, Sir Redblade, I must conclude that this article is a girdle of masculinity/femininity. It is cursed to change its wearer's sex, and carries no other noteworthy effect."

"You've got to be kidding me," Cato groaned.

"Take a look for yourself." Indeed, one of the ogre corpses had female features it lacked before.

Cato took the belt in his hand for a moment, and cast it down. "What a piece of crap. Let's get out of here."

And as he and Katniss argued over 10 gold, Peeta stayed behind. Momentarily...

"Where the hell were you?" Clove asked.

Peeta muttered something in response, and Marvel shushed them both. Katniss was peeking into a doorway, counting the goblins waiting in ambush. She saw a dozen, and then one more. "Probably more than we'd like to handle. Definitely more than I'd like," she reported in a whisper."

"Sir Redblade, I have a spell that may help with this," Madge offered.

"Go for it," Cato encouraged. "And stop calling me 'sir.' I'm no knight, nor do I plan to become one."

"Behold!" the mage announced her presence. "Creatures of darkness, I bring before you now, your impending demise by the mystical powers I wield, arcane strength beyond your feeble monstrous comprehension! The forces of the very cosmos are mine to command, and yet still you cannot fathom the dark, dismal end in store for you and your compatriots. Nay! Your little brains will shatter and be cleft and wrought asunder in the horrors of the magical displays I will soon channel into your fragile realities. The magic I wield is capable of twisting and distorting the very whole of the multiverse, and in fact is wasted on such pitiful creatures as yourself. But I shall bring it to bear nonetheless, and you shall rue the day I chose to wreak such inconceivable havoc on your lives with the sheer power of my arcane works. And far in the future, when this moment will be but a distant memory faded from the world, and when your children will come to play in the smoking crater of this den you once called your evil lair, they shall know nothing of your wicked ways, but all shall feel the echoes of the powers I unleash here today. And they shall..." she went on, explaining the grander implications of her spell, in excruciating detail and all for naught.

For the spell Madge was going to cast was Confusion, and the goblins all fell not to madness, but to slumber.

Katniss congratulated her.

Madge could only protest, "I did not _cast_ my spell yet..."

Perhaps in a few hours, Peeta and Clove could offer their opinions...

Cato was delivering the coup de grace on the sleeping goblins, systematically chopping off their heads as Peeta woke up. Madge must have cast an extremely strong sleep spell, to be able to incapacitate a dozen targets at once.

There was one goblin awake, protected by the same black armor, but adorned with jewelry and a white cloak. "Wretched do-gooders!" he shouted. "Prepare to meet your doom!" He held a rod topped with a skull. It started glowing with a black aura about it—a sign of an imminent magical assault.

"Looks like someone made their will save," Cato mentioned, as he raised his sword and stood in battle stance. He prepared to charge at the enemy spellcaster and disrupt the channeling. Madge kept stammering: "I didn't cast anything..." too quietly for anyone to hear.

"And now it's your turn! UNHOLY BLIGHT!"

His spell smothered the five adventurers with Evil energy, and all but Madge were filled with an ill sensation they couldn't shake.

"Pure-hearted fools!" the cleric laughed and gloated. "You cannot grasp the power of pure Evil!"

"I challenge it regardless," Madge answered. "DEEP SLUMBER."

"See how my dark powers protect me, elf. Your enchantment achieved nothing. UNHOLY BLIGHT!"

The growing sounds of agony drew Clove back, who had managed to wander off on her own not too long ago. She saw her allies, some writhing in pain, some brought to knees by it, and asked, "What's going on?"

"Join your friends in their doom! UNHOLY BLIGHT!"

Assailed with unholy power, Clove stood unfazed and stabbed the goblin cleric near his stomach. She cut his leg—knocked him over—and continued mutilating the green body and cutting it to death. "... Dibs on the amulet."

So they set off on their way. Peeta asked, "Hey, why wasn't Clove affected by that spell?"

Best not to dwell on it...

"Finally! Stairs!" Cato rejoiced. "Down we go, everyone. There's probably a few more levels of this before we reach our goal."

Clove interjected, "We have a goal?"

"Yeah. Didn't I tell you all why we're here?"

"You didn't tell me crap! All you said was 'I need a tracker,' so here I am. I figured we'd just romp around killing things and taking their stuff. Isn't that what adventuring is all about anyway?"

They stopped while Cato glared at her. And then he remembered that was right: he didn't tell her anything. The murderous sociopath had a point, and it bothered him so much that he kept walking down the stairs.

So it was left to Peeta to present her with the mission details, prefacing it, "Of course we have a goal. Here, I'll explain..."

_Deep in the dungeons of Abernathy's Castle, the evil lich Heavensbane hides, waiting_

_By his hand forged and filled with terrible monsters, a wicked sorcerer's sanctum_

_The Dungeon Master, who forfeited his life and soul for the eternal brink of death_

_Terrorizes the countryside of Highland Hills, and will not rest but for the flame_

_We quest to set the spark to destroy the taint of evil in this land_

_And bring safety to the countryside again!_

Just as grating every time...

The clearing at the bottom of the stairwell was packed with lizardfolk. Katniss took a quick count: fourteen strong, but without anything in the way of spellcasters. Good thing too, because at the rate the monsters were getting stronger, more spellcasters might be too much to handle multiple times in one day. In fact, more lizardfolk than goblins in that last room might be too much to handle as well.

Oh. Just their luck. As Katniss relayed the information back, a lizard wizard appeared. The mage threw a fit, but silently, because stealth mages who rely on invisibility must remember that listening is a skill independent of seeing.

Time for Cato to come up with a plan. "Damn. I don't remember much about massed battles, actually. Marvel, did you bring any javelins with that one spear of yours?"

"Na, lad. I may haf... fergot aboot tha."

"What are you asking him for? I can shoot fine!"

"You can be a spear repository on your own time, Katniss." He went over his team's abilities again, taking Madge into account last. She probably had the only spells left, and even then, she was also running low. "Fine, go shoot. Madge, go with her. Make them fight themselves however you can. And a little less oratory this time, please."

"I will comply, Sir Redblade." Only five words. Pretty impressive.

They took their spot above the horde of warriors, and with the most basic words of power, it began. A Charm Person spell, cast on one of the rank and file spearmen, quickly turned the group's weapons inward, and a series of arrows soon followed. The surprise attack dropped the pair of soldiers next to the charmed minion, who held his spear with its point in one of the arrow wounds. Madge cast Confusion at the opponent wizard, who, though not of particularly high level, was still lethal to his hapless teammates. In madness he conjured a cloud of sickening vapors, obscuring vision within, and inciting nausea among the lizardmen. Katniss's arrows flew into the sickly shroud, and the returning sounds told of impact against both scales and stone. The rest of the party moved just beyond the cloud, slashing its edges, cutting down any who tried to escape. The gas cleared when the mindless wizard inexplicably killed himself.

"We see here," Madge called as she and the archer rejoined the group, "Sir Redblade, what springs from a failed Will save or two. It did, however, rely upon victimizing another mage such as myself. While I find no displeasure exploiting them, I fear your primary mark—that lich Heavensbane—will be less susceptible to this tactic."

"We'll be fine. That's not why I hired you anyway," Cato said dismissively.

"Furthermore, my enchantments are depleted for the day."

"My spells, too," Marvel added. Healing adventurers was tough work.

"We'll rest here then. I'll take first watch. After that..." He considered his options. Madge and Marvel had to sleep. No vigil for them. Katniss was second in command, this was a great opportunity for her to show the position's demanded responsibility. On the other hand, this would also be a great opportunity to steal everything the whole group owned and run off somewhere.

So she was off the hook.

That left Clove and Peeta. Clove would certainly be capable to defending everyone.

She would also relish the chance to vent her deep-seated emotional problems. With copious stabbing.

She was also off the hook.

That left Peeta...

He was off the hook.

"Nevermind. Get some rest. I'll stay up. Looks like another all-nighter," he groaned.

It was like university all over again...

* * *

**AN: Food for thought. I should start calling this ending section that. Be sure to go back to see chapter 3 if you haven't already. I know I sort of blasted both of these out close together. And don't worry about what Katniss and Clove did on the nebulous "yesterday." I SWEAR I will eventually cover that. In a few years.**


	5. Long Night of Solace

The Crane Game

**AN: I'm considering putting a notice here whenever there's an almost romantic scene...**

**Just food for thought. I'm not saying there's one this chapter.**

* * *

_How long did we last? At least a few hours, I hope? Hopefully more than eight...? No, that might be a bit too optimistic. Did we really take that much damage from those encounters? I could have sworn goblins and a few ogres would be less dangerous than that, and Madge handled those lizardfolk really well..._

Cato's thoughts raced about his mind, mentally castigating the three girls they found. Okay, that wasn't really a fair way to put it, because Peeta wasn't quite a girl, but he fit the stereotypical blonde bill so neatly he may as well have been.

Cato sat at half alertness, trying not to drift off to sleep as he watched nothing approach the party. His iron will, the namesake of his entire family, was being challenged by the symphonic snoring of his "Stupid unreliable party members..."

As the first imprisoned yawns escaped from the waning vigil of his sentinel mouth and teeth, he heard a ghostly voice speak his name: "Cato... Cato..."

_I'm just imagining this, aren't I? I bet I'm about to fall asleep here and this is just some hallucination I'm sensing right before it finally happens._

The spirit continued, and Cato finally snapped back fully awake and asked into the air, "Is someone calling me?"

"No, Cato," the ghost spoke. "Nobody's calling to you from beyond the grave, or anything, I'm just shouting your name on my own volition."

Cato looked and saw his father's ghost before him. He immediately screamed at the realization that he was now being haunted, but pretended it was nothing more than a sudden start. "Oh, good. In that case, let me almost drift off to sleep again, I'm sure nothing interesting is going to happen anyway."

"Alright, Cato, that's quite enough!"

"Right. Well, dad, you and mom are both dead"

"You think I don't know that? I'm the ghost here. I think I know the prerequisites for that better than you do..." His dad paused for a while, and added, "Do you even know what prerequisites are? Or did the Career Academy have those fancy 'recommended background' listings instead?" The ghost pointed his finger at his son, and continued, ignoring his own digression, "Now stop being shocked with disbelief and listen to me. For once. Her violent heart of ice ends the flaming escape."

Content that he had said something profound, Cato's father nodded to him. Cato himself sat an balked at the absurdity of this message. "What was that about?" he asked.

"You didn't understand any of it, did you? Back in university... scratch that, back in _school_ we called it foreshadowing. Did you not go over any literature in the Academy?" He was waving his insubstantial arms in vehement disappointment, convinced he was right to think his son was hopeless. "Authors use it to build tension. By hinting towards future events before they happen, a narrative can create anticipation for them. They didn't teach you anything at all in the Academy did they? You know your mother wanted you to be a wizard just like I was, right? But what happened instead? I respected your choice to go to the Academy; I paid tuition—all 40,000 gp each year of it—for you, just so you wouldn't be burdened with student debt, because you wanted it..." Of course it was the other way around. Of course it was Porcius who wished that Cato be a wizard, a master illusionist just as he had been.

"Yeah. I know I wanted it, and if you're any indication of what might have been otherwise, I'm still glad to this very moment that you respected my choice back then."

"Okay, I- I don't care. I have game night with some archons soon; I gotta go."

As he began to fade away, Cato reached for his father's spirit form, and grasping at the last wisps for any sort of clarification of the future, Cato received only this repetition: "Remember, Cato: Her violent heart of ice ends the flaming escape..." He sat in bewilderment, trying to figure out some meaning deeper than Clove killing something that was on fire and trying to get away.

He really couldn't think of anything else...

Time just crawled by. The eight hours it was going to take for the two spellcasters to recharge felt like an eternity to the warrior who hadn't slept in days by now. Constant vigil was sapping the saturation from his ice blue eyes; the remorseless passage of time eroding away their freeze-burning energy.

Lethargic, though not unconscious yet, he sees Madge with her ruby-red wizard robes flowing off her graceful figure, already wide awake. While she mostly kept to herself, she stirred a bit, head tilted forwards and down in a pit of deep contemplation. And when his line of sight rose up to her ears, poking out of her hair and joining in the tip unique to elvenkind, he suddenly remembered that she probably heard his exchange with his father. That wasn't something he was the least bit subtle about. He had even assumed she'd have been asleep.

At last, she stood and walked up to him.

"You're awake," Cato greeted her.

Her eyebrows dropped slightly when she heard that, and she explained, "It is an aspect of elven physiology: my kind does not need to sleep, and in fact is biologically protected against magical inducement of the condition. Many among us trance, though. If that is what you'd like to consider 'sleep,' though, I should tell you now, Sir Redblade: I do not sleep."

He leaned back against a dungeon wall as he chuckled, "Join the club." The finely cut rock felt cool against the back of his head. The enervating sensation evoked his yawning, but he was experienced in the art of staying up. "You heard me, a few minutes ago. Didn't you?"

"You, yes. I presume it was the ghost of your father y"

"TURN UNDEAD!"

Marvel, it seemed, was a light sleeper despite what his being a dwarf ought to suggest. Perhaps it was a sense for hearing, but the mountain-dwellers weren't famous for that sensitivity either; that inherent skill belonged to Madge and like-blooded elves in forests. Speaking of whom, she also had unusually sensitive eyes, and was, ironically enough, averse to bright light.

Like the blinding flash from Marvel's holy symbol.

It felt much like a vampire in sunlight—all that searing pain, focused in on her irises alone. It was sharp, but brief. She recoiled and screamed, but everyone else was in such deep slumber that they did not shake the slightest at the sound.

There was some profuse apologizing on Marvel's part, and he turned back in to rest.

"As I think I was saying before being blinded," Madge tentatively whispered while rubbing her eyes, "your father put you to some sort of choice before he died."

"Something like that. Madge, do you remember what I said to you right before you took the job?"

"That was an experience I will never forget, no matter how hard I endeavor to do so. Then your father was a wizard, whose ultimatum was for you to follow his footsteps and become a mage as well? At the risk of sounding like he must, your intellect is certainly up to task."

"Thanks. It means a lot to me that you put it that way."

Madge postulated, "since he has indeed visited you from beyond the grave, he must have said something crucial. If it is anything personal, I will not press you to reveal it, but what did he tell you? I'm reiterating myself here: ghosts do not come for nothing, and the way more ignorant humans," she subconsciously turned her head towards Katniss and Peeta. Cato followed the trail of her eyes to see the two sound asleep. Without pause, though, she continued, "would more often ignore these otherworldly portents leaves me aghast"

"Ghosts an' ghasts now? TURN UNDEAD!"

Madge should not have faced the source of the noise. A giant sheet of light turned on less than a millimeter from her face.

After some more confusion, the dwarf again returned to the daze of pseudo-night. Was it actually nighttime? Nobody could tell that underground. Adventurers just slept whenever the spellcasters needed their spell slots back. They were rapidly getting better about this, though. Towards the end of this one "preparation period" as they were called, both Madge and Marvel had become much more efficient with the limited magic.

They went on for hours, trying to figure out this nebulous omen, when one of them mention something "which is slightly more likely."

And perhaps, but for a third flash of light, a lich somewhere might have had blighted mohrgs...

It was eight hours later. _Finally._

Cato was nearly slapping himself every minute to stay awake, and he felt like slapping everyone else too because they all seemed to be wanting to sleep in. "Get up, everyone!" he shouted. _If there haven't been any encounters all... night... I'll bet yelling like that didn't attract any._ As the rest of the party stirred awake each at their own pace, he ordered, "You three sneaky types, go scout that way," he made a gesture in the direction he meant, "and try not to attract too much attention. I'll stay here and watch over Madge and trigger-happy," Marvel's eyes widened and he showed a nervous grin, "while they prepare their spells for the day. You've got one hour. Move!"

As self-proclaimed second-in-command, Katniss really should have expected this. Cato wasn't pulling any punches with this "responsibility" thing he held in such high regard. Her past influenced her too much: she had always been low on the ladder of authority, and had always been financially screwed over for it. It just wasn't fair that the one time she put herself in a high position, the only guy higher up forced her to earn it.

She was stuck with leading the scouting party of herself, Clove and Peeta.

"I thought Cato said stealthy types," Clove muttered. "Why's blondie here? He's totally useless." Aside from being the reason any of them were here together, that was an entirely valid assessment.

Katniss racked her brain for some sort of justification for bringing him along. "Leader says so" was a rationale none of them would take, nor even dream of imagining. Was he stealthy? To either woman's standards, absolutely not. "Okay, Clove, I'll admit he's a little... less than stellar at everything we've ever seen him do. But maybe he has some skills we haven't seen yet. It's not like much has happened already. There's plenty of time for his potential to grow."

"Rubbish." Clove rejected all of her superior's logic. "It's a dungeon. What are we going to do but fight? Does he even carry a weapon?"

"Sure I do!" Peeta drew a sleek rapier he most definitely had all along.

"That doesn't count. I could sunder that by speaking too loudly."

"Maybe, but watch this!" With sweeping, fluid motions of his arm, he scratched a message on the wall to forever mark the glorious descent of the party into Haymitch's castle.

**The Firebirds wer here!**

It was carved with stunning precision, in a beautiful calligraphy. Only, it was spelled wrong, but oh well. It wasn't like Katniss cared about a little mistake like that, and Clove would probably never even notice.

"Okay, blondie, you win that. That's pretty cool."

"And it makes our job of finding you so much easier."

Uh oh. A deep voice with an aggressively ominous introductory line could not be a good sign.

Clove was half ready to shout "I TOLD YOU!" because Peeta just wasn't stealthy. She was also half ready to explode over not noticing whatever it was that said that. "We just failed our Hide AND our Spot checks, didn't we?"

"Oh yeah," that same voice responded. Katniss looked around and saw a chimera. It had a dragon head that looked like it just finished talking. It's goat head followed, "Big time."

"DAMN IT!" Clove spoke.

Too loudly...

* * *

**Food for thought: I leave it to you to figure out what those last two words are supposed to mean. Also, spleing is drah.**

**On a more serious note, how do you all feel about Cato/Madge? I'm just trying to nail down where I'll be taking something.**


	6. Ruthlessness One

The Crane Game

**AN: Can it just be assumed that I don't own much of anything?**

**Also, about the chapter title: it's not so indicative of anyone now, but you'll all understand by the next "Ruthlessness" chapter.**

**Oh, um, darn... Okay, here's the deal: You all know it's a chimera, but they don't. Yet.**

* * *

"What the hell IS that thing?!" Clove screamed in shock of the three-headed monstrosity before them.

"I don't know!" Peeta said. "I should have some Bardic Lore available to figure it out, but I must have failed my check for that."

"Is that a dragon head?" Someone had to appear less shaken than the other two. And as second-in-command, it was just another of Katniss's responsibilities. Seeming to be level-headed and rational at a time like this was critical. It came easily to her: lying was one of the key skills she learned growing up. It wasn't that much different to project deceit into her physical tells.

"I know what the heads are, Fire Girl," Clove snapped. "I just don't get why anyone would make that thing out of them."

"Enough of this!" The dragon head was spouting fire from its nostrils and its mouth dripped with liquid smoke. All this darkness threw itself with its eerie voice, "We are the chimera muttation, Nahrom, Gorger of Despair! From the caretaker, guardian and destroyer beasts of the world, we were forged!"

The lion head in the center picked up the right brain's train of thought: "For the purpose of serving our dark lord Heavensbane, we come because you have slain too many of the master's goblin horde."

Darker still than the drake and the lion, the goat proclaimed, "Your fool's journey ends here! We, the tools of Heavensbane's wrath, will crush you!"

All this, of course, sailed over their heads as Clove and Peeta whispered to each other "I'm surprised; I can't act this round" and "Same here; Do rogues have some ability to cover this?"

Katniss, with her uncanny sense for ambushes that kick in only after the ambush would begin, had a surprise round action, and suggested, "Sounds like you've got a deal in the making. But I think I have a better one." She craftily grabbed her bow with a trick of her hand. "How about: SNEAK ATTACK!" The twang of her longbow sent an arrow flying straight into the lion face's nose.

And yet, there was no reaction from Nahrom.

In fact, nobody did anything until Peeta whispered to the hunter, "Katniss, you won the initiative roll. Go again!"

"Oh, right..." she mumbled back, and drew her bow again. "SNEAK ATTACK!"

Finally allowed to take action, Nahrom's three heads all held expressions of the same shock the adventurers had just moments ago. "Wow, that first attack was surprising," on began, for the goat head to conclude, "but I REALLY didn't see the second one coming."

Because a follow-up sneak attack can really just come out of the blue...

Lion heads, as it turned out, were actually immune against arrows, and could absorb any arrows lodged in its flesh to seal the wounds they themselves inflicted. Or, at least, that was the case with this chimera mutt.

"Oh, great," Clove readied her daggers, "your damn surprise arrows don't do anything to it. I guess we're just gonna have to attack the old fashioned way."

"How? You broke my rapier!" That was Peeta's fault for carrying such a fragile weapon to begin with.

The dragon head opened its mouth with a deep breath, and as the influx of air slowed to a stop, Katniss interrupted Clove and Peeta's collective bickering to point out, "Fire breath incoming, guys. You might want to shut your mouths for this."

Whether inhaling fire was actually harmful was best left to other adventurers—more foolhardy ones, though such adventurers relative to the Firebirds were tough to come across—to investigate.

Exhaling fire, on the other hand, was certainly harmful to those it was breathed against.

Ignited, superheated: Clove and Peeta just barely avoided deep flame scars from being bathed in the hot plasma. Peeta's beloved lute—as he considered it, at least—caught fire, along with most everyone's clothes. Those would have to be doused and repaired eventually.

And as for Katniss, all the dirt she was constantly smothered in helped deflect some of the fire, but most of the conic section of space the breath filled, she merely dodged. That cone of fire must have easily covered ten feet or more to either side of her, and up to ten feet above, and she still dodged to whole thing.

Evasion was a little bit extreme.

Clove's instinctive reaction to this scenario was to jump at the chimera shouting, "Attack!" She caught the goat head with both her daggers, and alternately stabbed it to open a bleeding wound, carved and ripped it to expose its brain, and buried the blades in deep to hang on for dear life at the chimera tried to swat her off with its other two heads.

Unable to do much of anything else, Peeta suggested they escape back to the rest of the party and let them handle it. "I'll create a cunning illusion to distract him while we run," he offered.

The three stealthy types bolted back down the hall, and Peeta cast his illusion to serve as an object of the highest fascination to a muttation of a chimera: a female chimera.

"Cunning" as it may have been, the ploy failed. "Sorry," Nahrom said to his illusory female other. "We're in a committed relationship. We're probably not your type anyway—believe us, as a crossbreed, it's difficult for us to find mates. Again, I'm really sorry. It's us. You're great."

Seeing that even artificial monsters could love touched all of them: Katniss to her heart; Clove to her nerves, and Peeta, violently, to his already sparse sense of self-importance.

"It's not my fault!" Peeta argued. "That trick should always work! Ugh, how was I supposed to know he ain't a playa?"

Clove ignored his question and castigated him, "Never say 'playa' again."

Don't even go there...

Back at the resting spot, the hour of scouting time was running low, as the hour of spell preparation was just finishing. Cato stood over the two spellcasters, trying to count an hour in his head and a few minutes ago began asking whether the hour was yet done.

"All done yet?" he would ask, but this time, Madge answered, "Consider my daily repertoire of magical might refreshed." She was holding up her spellbook, a one-hundred page long binding for multi-page long spells. "It follows that my mind, full to burst with arcane power, is alight with a mystic adrenaline rush, waiting to meet the upcoming dawn and greet all its obstacles with the power surges fulminating within. All that is missing now, Sir Redblade," she spoke softer, in a more resigned and longing tone, "is a target on which to use it."

Her burning itch to unleash the power wouldn't last long, for the chimera Nahrom had chased the scouting party back to home base.

"Heavensbane wishes you a happy death!" it taunted them. "Have a nice day!"

"Cato! Madge! Help!" Katnis shouted, running by. They were injured: wounds weeping, skin searing, faces flooding with blood and sweat.

But that was someone else's problem.

Madge was looking at it; she was sizing up this new adversary—her first in the new day. She grinned with malice, and Cato only encouraged her in a whisper, "It's all yours. It seems physical violence is no match for the lich's monster."

"I agree." Madge seemed to be on the verge of breaking bad. "But this is. FIREBALL!" The orb of heat left a trail of smoke and aura behind it. It collided with Nahrom with a vicious blast, and where a true dragon might have eaten such a fiery assault, the dragon head of the chimera burned no less than the lion and the goat.

The aura trail from Madge's hands suddenly shifted direction. "LIGHTNING BOLT!" A jagged white light snaked through the air, carrying the force of a million billion charges clustered into one tight stream.

The bolts peeled its scales apart, and the beast howled in the pain of the exposure of its nerves to the open air pressure.

But discontent to just gravely wound the chimera that was now struggling to escape, Madge motioned one last spell against it: "SPIKED TENTACLES OF FORCED INTRUSION!"

Eldritch black tentacles groped the beast with an imperceptible strength. The trashing of the slimy appendages against its stark naked and cauterized skin tore at the vulnerable body meat. They felt their way to any aperture through which to further spoil its already desecrated form. Its screams—the signs of crushing and stabbing pain—echoed as a warning for all the goblins in the dungeon to prepare themselves against something, though they'd never know what.

Her other party members either watched in horror or averted their gaze altogether.

Clove, who bore thoughts of lashing out against anyone around when Cato wasn't looking, said, "Guys, if I ever look like I'm about to mess with Madge, please just remind me that that's a bad idea."

All of them more shocked than if they'd been the ones struck by lightning...

"Fly away!" Nahrom yelled at itself. It had just broken free from the thorny stranglehold after leaving pieces of itself behind. The lion, too, turned a coward: "I'm not comfortable being grappled there!" Only the goat still burned with rage: "You Firebirds have won this round, but you have not seen the last of us yet! We will return! We will have our revenge, and Heavensbane shall have his fulfillment. For we will destroy you and impale your mangled, smoldering remains on- NAARGH!" "NAARGH!" too, the lion screamed. "NAARGH!" the dragon chorused.

Nahrom collapsed, deceased, on the ground in a puddle of blood and gore, with two final stabwounds in its back courtesy of Clove.

"Touchdown!" she rejoiced. "Perfect jump, perfect landing, all in all, a job well done, I'd say."

"Clove!" Katniss had an exasperated look about her, with elbows out and hands pressed to her hips. "They were supposed to escape from this!"

"Hold up a minute, Katniss. You're telling me that, not only am I not allowed to kill Peeta, I'm not even allowed to kill someone who's clearly an enemy, and is trying to kill us?"

"Didn't you hear his whole speech at the end there? He was clearly set up to be a recurring villain, and you just killed him! Now what are we supposed to do for a plot?" She was energetically waving her hands around, trying to accent her point with wild gesticulation, but it was all lost on Clove. As she slowed, she settled to have one arm extended and that hand open, to present her point: "He had a name! He was swearing revenge! Everything about it screamed that he was going to come back to get us again someday, and you just- argh! What a waste!"

"It's not a total waste, Katniss, we get XP from it this way."

"We already got XP for defeating him because he was going to come back later for another encounter! We could have gotten even more if it weren't for you."

While Clove and Katniss were busy shouting at each other about whether it was right to kill the chimera, Cato recalled, "My dad told me 'Her violent heart of ice ends the flaming escape.'" He looked towards Madge, as though the question sitting inside might leap at her through their locked eyes.

And she picked up on it. Quizzically, she postulated, "The goat head was flaming at us—if we consider it to mean spouting promises of vengeance, which is said to burn. The rest of the beast was flaming in a much more literal sense, for which I believe I have sole claim over the credit. And Clove's 'violent heart of ice' most certainly cut that escape short. If this is your father's prophecy, Sir Redblade, I imagine it to be satisfied."

So they left the chimera behind, Cato noting, "That's it, then? That's gotta be the most lame-ass prophecy I've ever heard in the whole history of lame-ass prophecies."

"Maybe he'll still come back as a vampire or something," Clove offered. "You never know."

Katniss gave Nahrom his ultimate dismissal: "No, most likely not. I don't think we'll ever see him again after this..."

"Or will they? Dun dun DUN!"

"Peeta!" Cato groaned. "Stop doing dramatic musical cues for the dead chimera!"

He put his lute away and walked with the rest of them...

* * *

**Food for thought: So that's Kung-Fu Panda 2 and Breaking Bad that I've drawn into this mess, and probably a whole lot more. Try not to forget the whole vampire thing.**

**Oh, yeah. I was using Google translate with the word "three." I forget which language it was, but I swear one of the results was "rohm" or something. Fitting for a three-headed chimera, right?**


End file.
